Hi, we were listening to Jet Lag today, made me recall seeing you play it a couple of years back, maybe Cardiff?? Anyways, you said there was an in-joke in the lyrics, and only one person has ever sussed it...., I'm guessing its something to do with the '16 hours ahead' bit, but I'm damned if I can decipher this riddle!!! Please tell.......???

Er....nope. You can be up to a day ahead or beind, depending on location.

I used to get confused by this too.... it feels like you can be a whole day ahead because we talk about it being ... for example, wednesday in one place whilst at the same time its Tuesday somehwere else, so the place experienceing wednesday could be thought of as being a whole day ahead of the place experiencing tuesday

but one day = 24 hrs,

if you look at a pic of the earth rotating one side is in daylight and the opposite side in night, we only get one period of daylight in that 24hrs = one day

look at the time zone map

that 24 hrs is split down the middle....
24 divided by 2 = 12

the most ahead you can be is 12 hours
the most behind you can be is 12 hours

someone did tell me when I was a kid which planets have longer day cycles than earth but I can't remember which ones... or how many hours they have. However many hours the day cycle is, you always divide by 2 to get the longest time you could possibly be ahead or behind

smige2 wrote:But if you cross over the time zone line (whatever it's called) then you go back or forwards by 24 hours, surely?

not unless you do it in a time machine

a day is still 24 hours long.

12 hours behind
12 hour ahead

= 24 hours

so look at the time zone world map, one side starts at -12 with UTC in the middle as 0, moving to the other side as +12

(with complicated minor variences due to mapping maths I don't understand and some time zones having daylight saving times.... my maths and physics are not great)

so at the most basic explaination, you can only be a max of 12 hours either ahead or behind.

if you are in transit across the zones you still can't be more than 12 hours ahead or behind compared to another location, because although you are moving, the time zones themselves are not. (my maths and physic teacher must be rejoicing I remembered SOMETHING )

UTC is always UTC. (although also occaisionally reffered to as GMT)
EST is always EST and will always be UTC - 5 hours

plus time does not stand still in the location you left - so if you left an airport (say London which is UTC/GMT at 1pm, and traveled for 6 hours, the local time of the location you left is not still 1pm, its now 7pm there. however far you managed to go in six hours, the location you left in still in the same time zone. London is always in UTC/GMT.

you personally might appear to lose some hours of your day or apear to gain a few hours of your day, when you adjust to the local time zone compared to the one you traveled from, much like the added hour and lost hour we get when daylight savings time is applied. (remember the clocks go forward in Spring and back in Autumn) but the time difference from wherever you are compared to another place is still the same. You can still only be a max of 12 hours differance

if you were 24 hours behind, or 24 hours ahead, you would need a 48 hour day

Time zones confuse the heck out of me. I was looking at timeanddate.com last night and it said that it was currently Tuesday 5:49pm in Anchorage, and Wednesday 9:49am in Bangkok. Unless my finger counting was off, I figured that was a 16 hour difference. So, Bangkok is 16 hours ahead of Anchorage, yes?